What would happen to Planet Earth if our galaxy and Andromeda were to collide immediately?
The Milky Way will eventually come to an end. It is being approached by Andromeda at a speed of 110 kilometers per second.
The farthest object that the human eye can see is Andromeda. On a clear, moonless night, it can be seen as a faint glow 2.5 million light-years away, produced by gas from the billions of stars that make up our galaxy.
Although the distance between Andromeda and the Milky Way initially appears to be insurmountable, both galaxies are actually drawing closer to one another at a rate of 110 kilometers per second. This trend will last for the next 4 billion years, at which point they will merge in an inevitable collision that will create a new galaxy.
Due to their distance from one another, astronomers predict that the majority of the stars and solar systems in both galaxies will survive the merger; but, the event will ultimately alter the structure of the Local Group, the cosmic neighborhood of about 30 nearby galaxies to which we belong.
In the subsequent 2 billion years, Andromeda will get close enough to the Milky Way that its disc will surpass the Milky Way as the largest object in the night sky.
Andromeda achieves its maximum size between that time and the following 3.7 billion years before starting to merge with our galaxy in the following 20 million years as the sky fills with the rise of new stars.
Both galaxies lose their distinctive shapes after 4 billion years, and as Andromeda stretches outward, the Milky Way’s luminous core, which can be seen from Earth, starts to twist.
The last phase of the two galaxies’ merger, which will take place over the next 2 billion years and produce a massive elliptical galaxy, will start when the nucleus of the two galaxies resemble a pair of brilliant lobes in 5 billion years. referred to as Lactomeda by some astronomers.
Although the graphics and NASA images that give it shape depict the terrestrial viewpoint with mountains that encompass the night sky, by that time the Earth will be a sea of lava and life on our planet will have vanished attributed to the rise in light intensity of the Sun, which will form a red giant star and wolf down all the inner planets of the Solar System.
